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SINGLE OF THE MONTH 1 Gensu Dean & Planet Asia Chuck Berry
(Mello Music Group) Holy fucking Moly, this is
fucking mad. Strung out yet rocksteady beat peppered with a smear of static, and
the filthiest fuzz guitar this side of Eddie Hazell or Pete Cosey. Heard this
beat before on Roc Marciano's 'Scareface' rerub but my god, when you stumble
across something as fantastically unhinged as this you just want more and more
of it. 'Abrasions' is the forthcoming long-player, me want me want me want -
even more so having heard this monster. Go get. The Killers Flesh & Bone (Island) How can we dance when the world it turning? How can we sleep when our beds are burning? Lots & lots of words here achieving the special trick of meaning sweet fanny adams, rotating the same (yawn) "anthemic" motifs the rest of schmindie-shmock seems to have their Converse mired in at the moment but desperately shoving Casiotone Dixons pissabouts, badbad prog-poesy…

We had Ofsted inspecting us this past week at work so particularly enjoyed the weekend. Every day at work last week felt twice as long. All that extra effort looking over your shoulder, making sure that at every point you were looking busy, making sure that at every point you were providing evidence and showing demonstratively things that you do anyway. Elemental thing that has always fucked up at every place I've ever worked is the breakdown of trust between management and staff - always means that where you work transforms from a nice place to be into an array of cubicles, drones housed within, tip-tap-tip-tapping their paperwork into shape, the paperwork the only shape work has anymore, the joy gone, the malcontentment growing with every keystroke. Ofsted bring such mutual contempt to a dizzying frenzy of panic and rage. And what they insist on has little to do with encouraging thought as a teacher. It's a checklist any idiot could conform to, and bad teachers are great at…

(Original Headline: "get bent" - from Plan B Magazine, 2006) Words: Neil KulkarniVarious ArtistsQueer Noises 1961-1978: From The Closet To
The Charts (Trikont) In this age of all-out
retro gluttony, when every single tendril of pop can be teased out with a click into its prone entirety, the only way
that ol’ construct that is The Compilation can surely work beyond laziness is by
thematic dogmatism, by cutting a swathe through the ages and pulling
together the diverse with a purpose, with a reason to be together. Queer Noises, Jon Savage’s hugely inspirational, endlessly fascinating collection
of forgotten, and unforgettable, transmissions from the gay pop underground
works both as musical journey, and as a launchpad for your own
reconnaissance. Crucially, it works because it doesn’t try too much – it tries something
clear, specific, and always political. Savage’s engrossing
sleeve-notes spell out the score way more eloquently than I ever could, but what he’s collated here is a …

(from Plan B Magazine) Various Artists Congotronics 2: Buzz’N’Rumble From The Urban Jungle (Crammed Discs) My God, that’s a fucking atrocious title. And it plays into
the hands of every smart-arse who’s gonna call this ‘African music for people
who don’t like African music’. The idea being that only in the places where
this music either rhythmically simulates Western exploration, or sonically strays
into noise territory (which must always be a Western thing, obviously) can it
interest us – like we need to start slapping down the Can references just to feel
we can get close to this, feel at home. Still the myth of the dark heart; still
the notion that ‘World Music’ (y’know, as opposed to Our Music) is travel from
the safety of your home office. The sleeve and shtick of this, then, is little more
than an über-hip, slightly gritty version of one of those page-wide ads in The
Guardian for overland trips to the back of beyond that assure you that at no
point will you suffer from tourists’ guil…

20 Minute Party People
SERENDIPITOUS as f***. He must've been spying on my bedroom habits, the goddamn degenerate. OK, last two weeks I've been lying on my bed stroking myself and listening to nowt but Pharcyde, Quest, KMO, Nubian, 3rd Bass, Alkaholics and Beatnuts — wondering when hip hop was gonna get run again. Worrying about what new slice of style mag-feted sludgecore everyone'd pretend to like this week. Wondering why aged, disenfranchised b-boys have to insist on music as graceless and curmudgeonly and beardy as themselves. Building up a convenient theory to dismiss the stifling politeness of the nu-skool and call for a return to rap's good, old-fashioned traits of cartoon delinquency, get the f ***ing hoolies back in running things, as they have and always should. And then this mad bleat comes from the radio: "Slim Shady, Slim Shady..." and I follow it all the way to Ladbroke Grove and — f*** me! — the DJ's playing Kool G Rap & Polo and everyt…

I'VE A FEELING she’s not listening anymore. Every night I’d pray to my little goddess. She sits on a
tiger, the cosmos spinning around her 50-odd fingers, a beguiling smile playing
across her lips, knowing that hope and faith are not maintainable as permanent conditions.
She knows that they should take you over like love, a last resort when the will
and its inevitable futility have been exhausted. Every night I’d throw the day at her and every morning I’d
ask her to throw it back at me. And for a while things went my way. Then I
forgot my little goddess. She became another religious artefact on my mantel,
alongside the two Ganeshes; the Jain figurehead, proudly secular (that’s the
benefit of being a Hindu – you don’t have to believe in God); the wallet-sized laminate
of the Virgin and Child plucked from a Chicago sidewalk. Like every other
object around me, the goddess just became another distant taker up of space
within my planetsized demise. I let things slip and 2004 became p…